


A Lechery of Llamas

by de_Clare



Category: Original Work
Genre: Church of England, Cuddles, Equal Marriage, Fluff, M/M, The Episcopal Church
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 13:08:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21732484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/de_Clare/pseuds/de_Clare
Summary: After a lifetime of activism and personal sacrifice, a Church of England priest and his husband join The Episcopal Church. Is it admitting defeat?
Relationships: Priest/Husband
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	A Lechery of Llamas

“Well, we fucked. Does that mean the church won?” Lyndon asks, balling up a come-stained white undershirt and discarding it on the dull brown linoleum floor beside the bed—which always looks dusty, no matter how often they hoover. With the shock of December chill on his nipples, he burrows back into the sheets.

Matthew, lying faced away on his side, watches a bead of condensation trickle down the window, noting the fresh grayish bloom of black mould framing his view, despite the junior warden having sanded it down for the umpteenth time. Undoubtedly systemic. Probably structural. 

Beyond the chain-link fence and denuded trees, the building site has packed up and in its place Berufshochschulers in a boxy Scandinavian-style wood-slat building flutter under fluorescent lights.

The traffic hums-and-falls with the cresting wave of seven a.m. commuters. During his first days in the parish, the eight-lane motorway spill-off directly beside the rectory nearly drove him to  _ The Shining _ -style axe murder, but the noise is no longer distinct from his experience. It just sits in his skin and drives him and Lyndon to monthly retreats in the Rhine Valley. People can get used to most things.

He wraps himself in his duvet, snug in the privacy of his own body, perspiration cooling. Why do double beds have two single duvets in this country?

“Have you noticed that German drivers don’t honk?”

“Beg pardon?” Gently, Lyndon guides himself to turn over, facing Matthew’s half-exposed back. That tendonitis is probably arthritis, but he’s not ready for that step yet. Instead, he gazes on the clean gap of skin between Matthew’s short-back-and-sides and the line where he trims the dusting of back hair so it doesn’t peek over his shirt collars. His slightly-flushed skin tone would have looked terrible in purple.

“I just realized that I never hear car horns outside. How many hundreds—or thousands—of people pass through that bloody bottlenecked off-ramp without laying on the horn?”

Lyndon knows that this isn’t a distraction tactic, just Matthew needing to warm himself up to experience feelings. Gingerly, he takes an adjacent pillow and props it against the headboard, balling his fists to scoot himself in a sitting position. He needs to be upright to think. He turns the thought over like a coin from a new country.

“Remember driving in Italy? When red lights and zebra crossings were optional? And at the same time that populist prick was prime minister? I think, when people trust that laws—for the most part—work for them, they are more likely to follow the rules of the road.”

“Maybe. But then what about Chicago?”

“When people would hare down the shoulder at breakneck speed? I’m surprised we never saw a collision with a break-down. But remember when that big fuck-off SUV stuck his nose into the shoulder and immediately the noble little hatchback in front of him shunted over and blocked the lane? And then the car in front of them thought the hatchback was trying to elbow in and blocked, and again and again as far as we could see.”

Matthew’s back was still turned, but Lyndon could see the telltale wrinkle in his weathered neck that he was hiding a smile. From himself.

“Whose point does that prove?” 

“Neither. I just thought it was a good story. How one person decided it wasn’t fair and did what they could in that little hatchback, even against that...assault vehicle. And that set off a chain reaction.”

“Hm.”

Despite the chill, Lyndon wants to reach a hand in the glacial draft between their duvets to run his long fingers over Matthew’s hip, but he always becomes so introverted after bottoming.

“Or maybe it had nothing to do with right or wrong. Just needing to get where you’re going and bollocks to anyone jumping the queue.”

“Maybe getting hacked off by queue jumpers is one of the few universal human traits. That and not saying everything at the time you think it.”

“Noam Chomsky?”

“Taylor Swift.”

Matthew’s shoulders roll in a gentle laugh and then everything around him is still, holding its breath. Lyndon knows that he’s found the kernel of insight, or the pebble in his shoe.

“Why does anyone wait in a queue? Because someone tells you that if you’re patient and observe the posted rules your turn will come? And if this happens at Tesco or the petrol station with enough frequency, you believe it. The alternative is unthinkable.”

“Matthew—“

“Hm?”

“Stop letching out the window at the cute apprentices and come gaze at your aging lover.”

Matthew turns over, hugged tight in his duvet. That Welsh stripe of white in his fringe is rakishly mussed, but underneath, his brow is animated with passing thoughts. They need to adjust the heating timer if Matthew can only fuck when he wakes up already turgid.

“Life is not a queue. Sometimes there’s an overturned lorry on fire with-with—a cria herd of llamas darting around.”

“Is that really the collective noun for llamas?”

“Yes, but don’t you dare direct my thinking. Though...I do prefer alliterative collective nouns.”

“A lechery of llamas?” Matthew waggles his bushy gray eyebrows.

“Now you are diverting.” But, taking the opening for touch, Lyndon scoots closer until he can feel the firmness of Matthew’s body through the two layers of duvets. The comforting outline of his paunched belly and broad shoulders juxtaposed with his own eternally wiry frame. Lyndon strains to reach and kiss his cheek where the morning’s stubble is just beginning to emerge. “Remember when that equal marriage sit-in blocked traffic in the intersection for three hours and you missed the meeting with that bishop?”

“Yes,  _ that  _ bishop,” Matthew sighs. “You were upset that we only had two CDs in the car: Bob Dylan and Queen’s greatest hits.”

“It was a rental! But yes, I chose Bob Dylan and turned ‘The Times They are a-Changing’ on full volume. The sun came out, so we sat on the hood of the car amongst all those uni students, drag queens and activists.”

On his own initiative, Matthew tentatively reaches a hand from his cocoon, bridging the gap between their bodies. His fingers are always cold in winter. So Lyndon takes him by the wrist and puts his palm flat between his thighs.

“Oh no, it’s too cold.”

“Shh, just let me do this. And in return, listen. Maybe we could have queued up with the other motorists to your meeting with that bishop and then taken a number for the next queue. Maybe one day we would have reached the end of all queues and it would have been exactly as you expected. Or maybe not. Maybe it would have been yet another queue to a dead-end and doubling-back onto yourself ad infinitum. We can’t know. What I do know is that was the first time I remember you holding my hand in public.”

“Was it?”

Lyndon gives him a discerning stare, ascertaining whether he’s being deliberately dense or genuinely can’t recall. After twenty years, and all the sacrifices, the jouissance those sacrifices permitted, and everything in-between, it’s not often that he can’t predict what Matthew is thinking.

“Maybe.” Matthew’s hand is now warmed to and by his own body temperature, so Lyndon reaches down and twines their fingers together. “But now it’s not the last.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this intimate, cuddly story about a older gay clergy couple in the Church of England jumping ship with the American Episcopalians.
> 
> For context, the Church of England nominally ordains queer people, but they must remain celibate. In practice, this means choosing between: 1. Isolation, 2. Hiding your partner behind the door, and 3. Only having cruisy, anonymous sex. However, this is a hierarchical structure so in practice you can follow all the rules and still be kicked-out. I’ve watched it happen.
> 
> Personally, I’ve watched so many queer people shuttling between Anglican churches trying to find basic security, then being traumatised along the way either by bigotry or indifference. I also know my queer clergy in the Church of England who are making immense sacrifices on spec that this will pave the way for a less shitty future. Because, let’s be real, queer people disproportionately feel pastoral callings (empathy comes with oppression) and in England the CofE basically has a monopoly on full-time work. And we gotta eat. So, queer people who feel this beautiful and spontaneous desire to help are coerced into an impossible position—to fulfill your calling you must forgo intimate human connection and hide the shiniest parts of yourself that the wrong people might find ‘activist‘ or ‘non-conformist.’ (I was weeded out of the ordination process in part because I was labelled an ‘activist.’ WTF!?)
> 
> And some people make the IM-FUCKING-POSSIBLE sacrifice of trying to follow the letter of the rules and have a celibate same-gender partner. I make a lot of sacrifices for my partner, but if I’m not being paid to _not_ have sex, that’s where I’d draw a fucking line.
> 
> So, I wrote this story because I know that after Brexit, and with the acceleration of institutionalised bigotry in the CofE, a lot of people are looking to jump ship. If you’ve invested so much of yourself in change, that’s a fraught fucking decision. So I tried to write an intimate story which tries to balance these perspectives, but also gives all the queer clergy I know a moment just to enjoy what taking intimacy from your erotic center outside a culture of fear feels like. Some of it’s bullshit, like rectories with systemic black mould and needing to acclimate to new settings. But, fuck—the world is on fire and there’s no room for shame. What we do from here comes from love. It has to.


End file.
